Mar. 28, 2013

This rendering shows what a new Campus Martius/Cadillac Square area in downtown Detroit could look like, according to plans outlined by Dan Gilbert, chairman and founder of Quicken Loans, today. / Courtesy Quicken Loans

A rendering for the long-term vision for Grand Circus Park.

Dan Gilbert, chairman and founder of Quicken Loans, lays out a vision for a livelier retail centered downtown at the City Theatre in Detroit today. / Andre J. Jackson/Detroit Free Press

A rendering for the long-term vision for Capitol Park.

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The popular upscale suburban grocery Papa Joe’s will open a new store in the heart of downtown Detroit soon, just one of a host of improvements to come to downtown that were outlined Thursday by Quicken Loans founder and Chair Dan Gilbert.

Outlining his vision for a livelier downtown, Gilbert talked of Parisian-style sidewalk cafes, food carts, ground-floor retail that opens onto sidewalks, ice cream kiosks, pedestrian plazas and walkways, and a host of other “placemaking” techniques that he said were on the way.

“We’re all in,” he told an audience of some 400 invited business and civic leaders there under the auspices of the civic group Downtown Detroit Partnership.

Gilbert said Papa Joe’s would 15,000 square feet of ground floor retail space in the First National Building on Woodward at Campus Martius. The store will feature specialty foods, sit-down dining, a full bar, and other amenities.

Gilbert outlined another dozen or so new businesses that are coming downtown soon, some of them already reported, including the Neumann/Smith architecture firm in Southfield that is opening a studio student in the Gilbert-owned Wright Kay Building at 1500 Woodward.

He also confirmed that he and his partners have purchased the Vinton Building at 600 Woodward, an empty office tower designed by architect Albert Kahn that he said could become a boutique hotel or a residential building.

And Gilbert’s team have also launched an international design competition to find a new use for the site of the old Hudson’s store on Woodward Avenue. Gilbert aide Matt Cullen said that ideas submitted for the competition would be examined in hopes of starting on a new project next year.